How Powerful it Is to Be Really Listened To

“I asked a friend if they’d be willing to try a spiritual friendship practice with me. We met roughly once a month to talk about what was going on in our spiritual lives and to listen to each other. 

This brought home to me how powerful it is to be really listened to. Here was a space where I could talk about spirituality without fear of ridicule; where I could tentatively articulate things that were on the edge of my grasp, that I didn’t understand yet; where it was okay not to talk in coherent sentences, where I could bring what I was grappling with and also share those moments of grace and insight that are nothing original in the grand scheme of things but are personally moving and meaningful.

The feminist theologian Nelle Morton coined the phrase ‘hearing into speech’ to describe women’s experiences of finding that being deeply listened to enabled them to claim and inhabit their identities. This is a good description of my experience in spiritual friendship: I was heard into a grounded, quiet confidence in my faith; drawn to pray again even though I had thought that giving up my childhood image of God had rendered prayer untenable; and heard into a growing sense of purpose in life, of what in Quaker jargon we might call ministry or being led.”

— Katie Evans, 2020 (source)
Quaker spiritual director and hospice chaplain